Prison histories of the past two hundred-plus years generally highlight three major
periods which were characterised by differing rationales for prison and imprisonment.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the emphasis was on reform – of
both prisons and prisoners – and this period saw what Foucault described as the ‘birth
of the modern prison’. In the mid-nineteenth century a much more repressive approach
was adopted. Partly as a reaction to this, by the end of the nineteenth century and into
the twentieth century, new notions of reform and rehabilitation emerged. Of course, the
history of imprisoning people goes back much further than the eighteenth century. Holding
people before some form of trial, not necessarily in purpose-built prisons but perhaps
in castles, goes back centuries. Private gaols existed from at least 1166 (when Henry II
tried to set up a gaol in every English county) through to the eighteenth century; these
were often privately run, commercial undertakings with prisoners charged for food and
other services (including the hammering on and off of leg irons), and conditions – for
those with no money, at least – dreadful